Hiring Recovers In India; Gender Gap Persists

After easing the lockdown norms, many firms have opened their offices in full-length. Still, many offices are not in favour to call employees back.

Intent to hire across industries was always strong in 2021 but the second wave put a momentary brake on it and therefore, the impact was seen in Q1.

With people getting vaccinated, average daily cases falling and work from home picking up as a ‘here-to-stay business model’, hiring for the right talent is getting fast-tracked in most organizations to cover for the Q1 slowness.

On changing hiring trends, Deval Singh, Vice President at TeamLease Services, explains, "organizations are working hard to cover for the 2020 gap year that hit most of them financially. The fastest way to do so is by hiring the right talent as early as possible".

“The pandemic hasn’t been kind to any of the genders, but data suggests that women got impacted more than men. In the last four months, women lost jobs at more than double the rate of men. But it's not the gender bias that is the issue right now but the limited skills that both of them carry,” asserts Singh. The LinkedIn Data states that working women are 4x less confident than working men, while the average time taken for new graduates to find jobs has increased from two to three months.

 According to the experts, there are perhaps two core reasons why the gender pay gap is an ongoing problem that cannot be resolved by the efforts of women alone in changing their behaviour. The first is, in the name of closing the gender pay gap taking place against a changing environment, this way it may make gender equality more difficult to achieve.

 The second reason is a more equal distribution of pay requires a political will towards redistribution. This involves not only redistribution from men but also capital as the wage share in societies has declined just as more labour and mainly female labour has entered the labour market. Gender equality also requires more sharing of care work with men or more social support for care work through publicly subsidised services.

 A recent report added that India is one of the countries with the largest economic gender gap (32.6%) and that only 22.3 per cent of women are engaged in the labour market. A March 2021 report, published on the World Economic Forum (WEF) website, reveals “pandemic reversed women’s workplace gains in many of the world’s wealthiest countries as the burden of childcare rose and female-dominated sectors shed jobs”. Citing the latest annual PwC Women in Work Index, which looked at 33 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) club of rich nations, it said women were more likely than men to lose their jobs in 17 of the 24 rich countries where unemployment rose last year. Jobs in female-dominated sectors like marketing and communications were more likely to be lost than roles in finance, which are more likely to be held by men, according to the index, which called the slowdown a 'she-cession'.

 "Hiring people with the right mix of skills and experience helps organizations get faster to their financial goals. Also, it will help diminish the gender pay gap as the demand for different skillsets will be basis the gender preferences. An increase in hiring shows that India’s economy has started to get back on track. Consumer confidence is rising and that this will make way to strong business demand and supply. There will be a huge amount of hiring happening in Q2 for most organizations are very optimistic about the second half of this year," believes Singh.

 Companies today believe that covid has widened India’s skills gap as well along with disparity in payout between both the genders. The pandemic boomed and created a demand for some industries that traditional schools don't even know how to skill people up for.

 Thus, the future of the workforce included both men and women, require upskilling and reskilling, which will help overall increase performance confidence and in-diminishing the gender pay gap.